2.3. Previous Related Studies in the Field
2.3.2. The Impact of TBI on L2 Speaking Performance
2.3.2.4. The Impact of TBI on L2 Speaking Performance
To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, only one study was found in the literature to investigate the impact of TBI on improving L2 students’ abilities to communicate effectively using the target language. This study was conducted by Torky (2006) in which the researcher investigated the impact of TBI on first-year secondary students’ speaking performance in Giza Governorate; about 4.9 km southwest of central Cairo, through a TBI program designed in light of the cognitive approach to language learning. Considering the CAF components as the three main dimensions of L2 learners’ overall interlanguage development by cognitive approach theorists, these three CAF components were used in this study to determine L2 students’
speaking development. This study targeted the best instructional practices that can be utilized in the classroom to increase students’ abilities to communicate effectively and speak more fluent, accurate and complex language.
The employed TBI program integrated two distinct theoretical frameworks into TBI lesson plans: (1) the socio-cultural theory which focuses mainly on enabling students to achieve communication in real time, as represented in this study by the assigned communicative tasks, and (2) the information processing theory which gives due attention to language performance as well as language competence, believes in the existence of interlanguage system, deals with the second language as a special phenomenon apart from the native language and assumes that humans have limited attentional capacities; namely, they attend to a thing at the expense of others.
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The adopted program was validated by a panel of ten EFL specialists and piloted to ensure its suitability for the participating students’ linguistic levels and cognitive abilities and to determine the time needed by them to complete the given communicative tasks. The learning objectives of the program included enabling students to (1) speak grammatically correct language, (2) use adequate and wide range of lexical words and collocations, (3) demonstrate intelligible pronunciation, (4) organize speech cohesively and coherently, (5) communicate effectively in proper communicative contexts, (6) speak in a good speech rate, and (7) express a range of spoken functions properly and effectively (e.g., giving directions, expressing opinion, describing houses, pictures and people, making suggestions, giving advice, making offers, apologizing, asking for permission, exchanging personal information, so forth).
The quasi-experimental research design was espoused and the participants (76 students) were randomly divided into two groups; experimental and control groups. Both pre and post tests were administered before and after the experiment for both groups to measure their speaking improvement. The control group received regular instruction (the traditional 3Ps) by the class teacher, while the experimental group received TBI by the researcher herself to ensure proper delivery of TBI throughout the experiment period. The students with regular instruction had little opportunities to engage in classroom communicative activities and most of the teaching time was used by the class teacher to teach them the new vocabularies and linguistic forms necessary to speak about the intended spoken functions. Those students were not offered time to discuss the activities in their textbook, and their practices of the target language were confined to answering the class teacher’s questions, doing mechanical drills or completing tightly structured dialogues. Adding to this, the students with regular instruction were not given opportunities to analyze, self-assess or reflect on their own speeches.
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Describing the TBI treatment in detail, each speaking lesson was split into three phases:
pre-task, during task and post-task phases. During the first phase, the teacher (the researcher) gave two or more consciousness raising activities to prepare the students for the main task. The number of consciousness raising activities was closely connected with the difficulty of the task.
Such activities were provided in the form of listening or reading tasks, and the students were asked to analyze the language used to increase their sensitivity towards some particular spoken features intended to be developed during the lesson in particular and throughout the study in general; such as fluency, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation among other spoken features. In addition to the consciousness-raising activities, as a way to refresh the students’ mind before assigning the task, the teacher, on occasion, asked the students to complete some warm-up activities before the actual work on the task, aiming at exposing them to some linguistic patterns and lexical phrases that they may need during their reporting on the task, and the teacher, when necessary, may have to explain the proper contexts and situations where they can be used.
After getting familiar with the task and how to complete it, the teacher gave the students some instructions or guidelines about the time necessary to finish it (which was given based on the difficulty of the task) and about the shape, style and ways of delivery of the task among other necessary information that the students needed to know before working on the task. Also, the teacher provided information on how to organize the speeches by the students to show their understanding of the task and to make their speeches understandable in addition to information on the possible ways to solve any grammar and vocabulary problems encountered by the students. Besides, some examples of similar tasks were occasionally yielded to expose the students to the target language and attracting their attention to the task.
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During the task stage, the students were assigned to work in pairs or groups to complete the task, and the role of the teacher was mainly facilitative of language learning. The teacher’s role also included giving clarifications, preventing the use of native language and ensuring full participation of the students. This was followed by the second sub-phase in which the students planned to present their work aiming to provide clear, accurate, organized and proper speeches in front of the class. The teacher’s role during this sub-phase was confined to answering questions related to pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. The third sub-stage was the reporting stage in which some students were assigned to report on the task in front of the class while the other students from the same group had to observe the presenter’s speech and write comments about the produced language in terms of appropriateness, vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and discourse organization using a checklist given out to them. The teacher, at this time, worked as a chair person who set the time and gave permission to speak. Some comments on students’ performances were written by the teacher for later use during the third phase.
Adding to this, the teacher, during this third sub-stage, enhanced the speech flow by reducing interruption to minimum. By the end of the public speech, the other students were invited to ask questions or give comments to speakers, and some comments by the teacher on speakers’
performances were also provided using words of praise and encouragement and without giving public corrections at this stage.
During the third phase, the teacher offered constructive feedback on students’
performances and provided recommendations for improvement during the next tasks. The students were also asked to do self/peer evaluation of their speeches using a checklist of all examined speaking sub-skills. The students’ performances were sometimes recorded to facilitate the process of evaluation. The focus during this phase was directed to some linguistic forms
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which were considered important by the teacher to explain while hesitation and false starts by the students were deemed natural and required no intervention by the teacher. Also, during this phase, the students were asked to reflect on and discuss the mistakes made by the other students while reporting on the task, or they were provided with some consciousness-raising activities and asked to identify, classify and investigate these linguistic forms in the given activities.
Along with these activities, the students were asked to engage in some practice activities to help them construct the newly learned language and automatize the new linguistic forms. These activities included some drill or repetition activities, pronunciation/ vocabulary/ grammar activities, rearranging parts of conversation activities and so on. Alternatively, as a way to tackle the limited time allocated for the lesson, the recorded speeches were given to the students to re- evaluate them at home using the same checklist, and the comments by the students were discussed individually with the teacher.
A speaking checklist was designed by the researcher to pinpoint the most important speaking skills necessary for first-year secondary students. Some resources were used to identify these skills; such as teachers’ guide, previous literature on the area in Egypt, the procedural objectives included in the Ministry of Education directives, students’ textbook and the comments of a panel of jury. At its final format, the content of speaking checklist included measuring grammatical competence, discourse competence, pragmatic competence and fluency.
The data was collected through pre-post tests taking the form of interviews. Each interview included eight sections to measure students’ performance on eight tasks/ speaking functions (exchanging personal information, expressing future intentions, giving directions, giving advice/ making suggestion, talking about the past, describing, giving opinion and creating social situation). Each interview was allocated a period of 30-35 minutes to complete
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the test. The pre-post tests were recorded and scored by three expert raters and the degree of inter-rater reliability was established through correlation coefficients.
The students’ speaking performance was measured in view of a detailed rating scale fully developed by the researcher to include 5 points (5 = very good performance and 1 = very poor or unaccepted performance). The scale was developed in light of the most contemporary international EFL speaking tests; such as the Interagency Language Roundtable scale (ILR) speaking scale, ACTFL speaking scale, the Simulated Oral Proficiency Interviews (SOPI), the Cambridge EFL Speaking Test and the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI).
The results from the study showed the positive effect of the assigned communicative tasks on students’ overall speaking performance, their performance in each genre and macro- function (expressing future intentions, interacting in social situations, discussing opinions, giving directions, exchanging personal information, describing, narrating a story, making suggestions and giving advice) and their performance in all measured speaking sub-skills (grammatical competence, discourse competence, pragmatic competence and fluency). They also emphasized the importance of integrating the principles of the cognitive approach in TBI classes by involving students in cycles of mental processes and actual communication through three teaching phases to enhance students’ speaking proficiency. The researcher at the end of this study gave some recommendations for future research to encompass duplicating the study in different educational levels and on different speaking genres; such as narrative, expository and descriptive genres, using longer periods of time to be able to generalize the results across the country.
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